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The agent is OpenTelemetry eBPF Instrumentation (OBI), an OpenTelemetry project, shipped here unmodified and version-pinned. It is Apache-2.0, and its LICENSE and NOTICE are preserved on install. Upstream publishes a CycloneDX SBOM per release.
Availability. The zero-code agent is an early-access distribution. It is installable, upgradable and tested, and it is not yet an integrated part of the product: there is no dashboard page for it, no in-product installer and no self-service download. Ask your account contact for access.Its telemetry, once flowing, is ordinary OTLP and needs nothing special — it appears in Services, Traces and Metrics exactly like SDK telemetry does. That is the design rather than a shortcut.

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What “unforked” means, and why it is the claim to check

Most eBPF agents on the market are proprietary binaries that emit OpenTelemetry. This one is the OpenTelemetry one. The practical difference is portability. Because the binary carries nothing aiAxonIQ-specific, the same agent, with one endpoint changed, exports to any OpenTelemetry backend. Adopting it is not a decision you have to unwind later.
This is a testable claim, not a positioning statement. Change the endpoint and credential in the configuration, point them at any OTLP collector you like, and watch the same spans arrive. If you are comparing vendors, that is the experiment worth running against each of them.

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What this distribution adds

Everything aiAxonIQ contributes sits around the binary:

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Every default that is changed

Each is a deliberate departure, argued where it is made:
Upstream’s published capability lists are incomplete for the pinned release, and this was established by running the binary rather than reading about it.
  • Upstream’s application line omits CAP_CHECKPOINT_RESTORE. The agent refuses to start without it. Loud, and quickly diagnosed.
  • Upstream’s network line omits CAP_PERFMON. With exactly the documented set, the agent’s own gate passes and the kernel then rejects the socket filter. The agent comes up, reports healthy, and produces nothing.
The second is the dangerous one, and an operator carefully following upstream’s least-privilege guidance lands exactly there. The profiles here are measured against the pinned release, not copied from documentation.

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Version pinning

The upstream version, the chart version and the capability sets are pinned together, because they are one fact rather than three. Changing the pinned version is a deliberate act that requires the capability requirements to be re-measured — they are a property of the binary, not of its documentation.
Older upstream releases are not supported here. Releases before the pinned one use a different configuration schema and their capability requirements were never measured. Newer ones are likely compatible but unverified until measured. Your account contact can tell you what the current pinned version is for the distribution you have.

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Licensing

Upstream OBI is Apache-2.0. This distribution’s own packaging is Apache-2.0.
The distribution downloads upstream artefacts at install time and redistributes no binary, verifying them against published checksums. That is a deliberate position while the GPL implications of redistributing eBPF binaries are under legal review — it keeps the question open rather than answered in advance.The practical consequence for you: installation requires outbound access to the upstream release host, once, at install time. Fully air-gapped environments need the artefacts staged in advance — talk to your account contact.

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Agent architecture

What runs where, and how telemetry reaches aiAxonIQ.

Capability profiles

The three privilege levels, measured against the pinned release.

Compatibility

Kernels, distributions, clouds and runtimes.